Sunday
12/21/14 Freeville/Homer Ave UMC’s
Sermon Title: “A miracle will
occur”
(“Signs He is coming” series: Part 4 of 5)
New Testament/Gospel
Lesson: Luke 1:46b-55
New Testament
Scripture Lesson: Romans 16:25-27
Gospel Lesson:
Luke 1:26-38
My brothers and
sisters, friends, welcome once again on this our Fourth Sunday of this our Advent
Season. This season where we wait, we anticipate, we hope, and we long for the miracle
of the coming of the Messiah. This season were we wait, we anticipate, we hope,
and we long for a better world. A world where peace, love, justice, and truth
prevails. For in this season, we await the Christ, the living God in the flesh,
who will come to us as child in a manger in Bethlehem.
This day is also the Winter Solstice, which is the day of
the year with the least amount of light. For this reason, we will have a Blue
Christmas or Longest Night Service tonight, as tonight is the Longest Night of
the year. While hope is coming into the world soon, this day is literally the
darkest of all of the days of the year, and sometimes on a day such as this, we
need to pray, to mourn, and to come together as a family just a little more.
For these reasons, tonight at 6:00 pm, we will have a Blue Christmas or Longest
Night Service.
This morning though, we continue to move towards Christmas,
towards the coming of Christ. For He is coming to us in the manger this
Christmas. He is coming to be baptized by John the Baptist, and to begin his
earthly ministry. He is also coming back to earth one day. Regardless of which
perspective we look at then, He, Jesus, is coming.
In his coming, we are given certain signs or indicators
that he is in fact, coming. Of the various signs and indicators that could be
picked, I chose when Jesus told us to “Watch Out!” “Stay Alert!,” for his
return or second coming to earth. I talked about before He comes, that “A
Messenger will prepare the way,” in John the Baptist. Last week, I talked about
how the anticipation of the Messiah coming will grow faith in some, yet others
will reject His coming all together.
Well for the Messiah to come then, in the fullness of what
it means to be the Messiah, the anointed one, God in the flesh, it would seem
reasonable and logical that one or more miracles would need to occur for this
to happen.
In this way, in this “Signs He is coming” series, I will
talk about in this fourth part, the idea that “A miracle will occur.” You see
the Christmas narrative or story in Gospels includes miracles. We might be
asking ourselves, well, just what is a miracle?
According
the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a miracle can be defined as, “an unusual
or wonderful event that is believed to be caused by the power of God, or a very
amazing or unusual event, thing, or achievement.”
In today’s gospel reading we have the miracle of the Virgin Mary
conceiving a child. Meaning that Mary, who was likely a girl around thirteen or
fourteen years old, became pregnant without ever being intimate with Joseph.
This occurred through what is commonly called the “Annunciation,” or the
announcement, or the proclamation, from the Angel Gabriel that Mary had been
chosen to carry the Christ Child.
It certainly
was also a miracle the Mary’s relative Elizabeth, who was perhaps a cousin, or
perhaps an aunt, became pregnant six-month prior to Mary becoming pregnant. It
was a miracle because Elizabeth was no longer able to conceive a child, due to
being too old to conceive. It was also miracle that the angel Gabriel came to
Mary at all in the “Annunciation,” and it was a miracle when an angel of the
Lord appeared to young Mary’s fiancé Joseph in a dream. You see Joseph had
quietly ended the engagement, or the courtship, over the pregnancy, but then an
“Angel of the Lord” told him in a dream in Matthew 1:20, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”
It was also no doubt a miracle, when
the angel Gabriel told Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah that she would conceive a
child, that they would name him John, and that he would be “mute” until John was born. According
to the scripture, Zechariah did not speak until John, who would become known as
John the Baptist, was born.
So really and
truly then, when we look at the menagerie of varied happenings and events
around the birth of Jesus Christ, we have many miracles. We have the “angel of
the Lord” that appeared to the shepherds, we have the Bethlehem Star that
guided the way to the manger, and etc. To have the birth of the living God then,
having one or more miracles would seem to be a logical occurrence to usher in
such a King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.
Specifically though, I want to talk a
little bit about though just the miracle of the virgin birth of Jesus’ mother
Mary. To start this, the gospels of Luke and Matthew are the only two gospels
that give the birth narrative or story of Jesus being born. Further, in the
gospel of Luke and Matthew, we are given the story that Mary conceived a child
by the Holy Spirit.
If this is true then, it certainly is
a miracle. For to be a miracle, it needs to be something that is not easy to explain,
that draws us to God. For if God created the universe and everything in it,
could God enable Mary to conceive the Christ Child as a virgin? Do we believe
in this Advent Season in a God that is powerful, that can change us from the
inside out? Do we believe in a God whom can do all things?
Certainly for some of us, the rational
parts of our human brains would say that the miracle of the virgin birth isn’t
really possible.
Yet even scientific discoveries are even starting to help
substantiate the idea of virgin births in some species. In an article on news.sciencemag.org,
Carrie Arnold Wrote an article called “‘Tis the season for twinkling lights, wrapping paper, and
virgin birth.” In the article, she wrote this, “For billions of Christians
around the world, the holidays are a time to celebrate Jesus’s birth to the
Virgin Mary. But for many animals, virgin birth is far from a miraculous event.
Researchers have discovered a growing number of species that reproduce without
assistance from the opposite sex.”
“Known formally as parthenogenesis,
virgin birth occurs when an embryo develops from an unfertilized egg cell. The
development of an embryo usually requires genetic material from sperm and egg,
as well as a series of chemical changes sparked by fertilization. In some
parthenogenetic species, egg cells don’t undergo meiosis, the typical halving
of the cell’s chromosomes, before dividing into new cells. These offspring are
generally all female and clones of their mother. Other forms of parthenogenesis
occur when two egg cells fuse after meiosis.”
Am I claiming
that Jesus Christ was born of virgin because of Parthenogenesis? No, of course
I am not, I am simply saying that with God all things are possible. That God is
so powerful, that through the Holy Spirit a virgin peasant girl named Mary
could possibly conceive the Christ Child, through the Holy Spirit. It might be
a stretch for some, but what is impossible for God?
While being
an unwed pregnant girl in Mary’s culture could have meant a potential death
sentence for her, she instead even sings a song of praise, which is what our
first gospel reading from Luke 1:46b-55 is. Mary glorifies the Lord. She
rejoices that God has chosen her, a common girl, to do something so big and
noble. She then continues to praise and thank God for choosing to bless her
with being the mother of Jesus Christ.
In the
Apostle Paul’s Epistle or Letter to the church in Rome from this morning, Paul
talks about how Christ, and his coming, was the fulfilment “revealed through
what the prophets wrote.”
Looking at
the text from our second and main gospel of Luke 1:26-38 reading from this
morning, the gospel says that “When Elizabeth was six months pregnant, God sent
the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a city in Galilee, to a virgin who engaged to
man named Joseph, a descendent of David’s house.” The angel Gabriel then
announced to Mary in the “Annunciation,” that she would bear the Christ Child.
The angel Gabriel tell Mary that this Christ, this Jesus, will be given from
the Lord God, “the throne of David his father. He will rule over Jacob’s house
forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.”
Mary was
confused as to how she could conceive as a virgin, and the angel Gabriel said
that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit. She was told about Jesus that, “the
one who is to be born will be holy. He will be called God’s Son.” The angel
then said, even your relative Elizabeth who “unable to conceive” is “now six
month pregnant.” The angel Gabriel says, nothing is impossible for God. May
then says, “I am the Lord’s servant, Let it be with me just as you have said.”
So from this
gospel reading, it sounds like a miracle, if we are taking the text literally
in this sense. In this Advent Season, and this soon to be Christmas Season,
maybe we all need to believe in miracles just a little more, maybe all need to
trust in God just a little bit more. For the fact that God will come down to us
on Christmas, in the form of Jesus Christ is the ultimate miracle. Jesus, our
savior is the ultimate miracle.
Around us
every day in fact, are miracles. When a child is born, it is a miracle. When
someone cures a disease, it is a miracle. When someone has terminal cancer, and
is healed, it is a miracle. When we go home to be with the Lord, sometimes this
is the heavenly miracle that we really needed all along.
I
would like to close with a story this morning called, “When Life Tumbles In,
What Then?” which was reported in Hans, God on the Witness
Stand (Baker 1987). Hans sourced the sermon from Arthur Gossip, The
Hero in Thy Soul (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930). Here is how it goes, “In
1927 the wife of Scottish preacher Arthur Gossip died suddenly. When he
returned to the pulpit he preached a sermon titled “When Life Tumbles In, What
Then?” In that sermon Gossip compared life to watching a plane pass
through the sky during wartime. There you are, lying on your back watching a
plane fly gracefully across a brilliant sunlit blue sky when all of a sudden it
is blown apart by gunfire and falls to earth a tumbling, tangled mess of metal.
Only on this occasion the gunfire was the tragically unexpected death of his
beloved wife.”
“Gossip went on to explain
that he didn’t understand this life, but what he did know was that during this
darkest period of his life he needed his faith more than ever. “You people in
the sunshine may believe the faith, but we in the shadow must believe it. We
have nothing else.” Without his faith there was no hope.”
To me then
brothers and sisters, friends, we can argue over whether Mary conceived the
Christ Child as virgin, we can even debate other miracles. If anything though,
let these miracles give us hope, even if we struggle with them. Hope is what is
coming this Thursday December, 25th. For in the Christ Child, is the
hope of the nations. The one whom will set the captive free, deliver us from
sin and slavery, and give us a road map called the gospel, so that we may transform
the world around us. This church then is a miracle. These stained glass windows
are a miracle. For God’s love and grace itself is a miracle. This love and
grace is coming, for He is coming very soon. Amen.
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